Well you did answer on the thread I suppose, but you never messaged me a nice detailed response. ;) From you sfwalcer, I expect greatness! You're not just some audio hooligan are you? ;) Now go, compose a thoughtful reply. hahaha j/k I'll accept your dt series response ;)

^

Damn you quoted before my edit.

Meh your tenores has to prove that they are worth my tyme 1st, you get only what you deserve. ;)

Well you did answer on the thread I suppose, but you never messaged me a nice detailed response. From you sfwalcer, I expect greatness! You're not just some audio hooligan are you? Now go, compose a thoughtful reply. hahaha j/k I'll accept your dt series response

^
Damn you quoted before my edit.

Meh your tenores has to prove that they are worth my tyme 1st, you get only what you deserve.

So for now you're only getting my dusty/ half arse gifs/ replies. : P

Haha

20% of head-fi's data usage is text, the other 80% is sfwalcer's gifs ;-) lmao

You my friend are a genius. They are 100% out of phase. All those samples sound exactly backwards. When they are switched they sound just like my ostrys. So there you have it sfwalcer. You must not be able to here phase variations ;) hahaha

But seriously, that explains what I described about the center imaging and everything. I'm actually surprised I didn't thin of testing that. Good call.

That's precisely what I'm hearing. The only way to fix it would be recabling them, which isn't worth the cost in my opinion, as they don't look easy to recable. Also, I used logic pro to swap the phase on a full song and do a comparison. They sound 100% identical to my ostry when the phase is swapped. So apparently someone or some machine at the factory swapped the polarity of the wires...

Oh my....out of phase is a serious quality control issue....wonder what those guys at the Ostry production line were smoking before assembling those Ostriches Guess the bassy Tenores issue pales in comparison

Yep, I emailed a few people I thought shared similar impressions to mine about iems and asked them the same thing. I'm trying to get a sense of what other neutral iems I might be into, and to learn what's out there i may want to try even if I wouldn't necessarily think I'd like them based on graphs. I'm a graph-head, I admit it. But I'm not closed minded enough to not try or like something that isn't graphed as flat, especially since there are many graphing standards. In fact, I think the ostry sounds superb, and that doesn't graph flat. So my research continues! :-)

So far SGS and vwinter are the only ones that had a good answer ;) hehe

Let's be real....We all have different ears and some with hearing loss and some without. The shape of our inner ears do affect the sound one way or another too. I guess if we want to hear a total ruler flat response then you've gotta hard wire the music directly to your brains bypassing the ear...only then will you get total flat response into your brain. In the real world we buy the best that we can afford and even though if they're not perfect, we'll somehow make compensations to live with it then save enough to buy an even better pair....if not then settle for the Giant Killer The quest for the best will never end...so there you go HeadFiers...aren't we all chasing after a cloud

No it doesn't. This is the first time someone reported an issue with the Ostrys, this thread is full of reports of variations, channel imbalance etc. Today I am gonna pick up two more pairs sent to me by James (thanks James ), in order to compare them with my own two pairs. Stay tuned .

Listening to Drake's Take care on Sony X Walkman I'm thinking the first pair I have opened is non bass heavy. Possibly a neutral/ref. ?
Definitely don't sense mid bass bloat/bleed.

Fairly neutral to my ears. This might be first IEM that I don't Equ (eph100,asg2,ie7,ue10).

The standard tips fit good for me. Great isolation & comfort. I will try next size up tips & others later as I hope to get more sub bass.

These things are power hungry as I'm having to run the Walkman at almost max volume so would definitely benefit from amp. I could run the ASG2 about 5 notches lower to experience the same volume boost. Even the iPad Air (neutron player) requires hitting near max volume.

Unsurprisingly, early impressions tell me they sound similar to my old knackered favourites Yamaha EPH100 's that also use micro drivers. This is great news for me.
Listening to Trance is almost equally enjoyable with both phones and is what i considered the EPH100's forte.
With hardly any playtime on the Tenore's I can already sense more detail & space/air. These things are foot tapping great with Trance.

For the Trance listening session I lightly Equ'd up the highs to add more sparkle to my liking and that bought out the woww factor to my ears. Great extension & detail in the highs without a tiring earache. I'm thinking great for Trance/EDM lovers.Edited by archy121 - 7/4/14 at 8:17am

So today i received 2 of James' Tenores. His good pair is the best i've listened to so far. Here is a bass comparison between it and the rest of the pairs using a splitter, test tones and left/right db adjustments through my soundcard:

HZ --------- 40| 60|80|100| 120| 140| 160| 180| 200|

James' Bassy -4| +7| +3| +4| +3| +2| +1| +2| 00

My first pair +1| +4| +2| +1| +2| +1| 00| 00| 00

My 2nd pair -2| +3| +1| +2| +2| +1| 00| 00| 00

Despite the fact James' reference pair produces more bass from 40hz and below, it sounds the flattest by far. The difference between my two pairs seems small but it's audible, my 1st pair sounds bassier. The drums reproduction issue is present with every pair i've tested to a certain degree. FR aside, there are common factors like sub bass elevation and longish decay times. Echo before attack in the transients also seems longer than average.

I would conclude that the Tenore driver is simply not equal to the tuning, a faster driver would handle the sub bass elevation more gracefully. In retrospect, a gentle roll off from 120hz and bellow would have made the slowness of the driver a lot less noticeable.

As for QC, it's simply atrocious. No two pairs share the exact same cable length. Bass tuning is as inconsistent as it gets. Members get pairs with channel imbalance or pairs that stop working after a few days. Testing with tones also shows some mild channel imbalance in the lower frequencies of most of the pairs i've tried. I love the Tenore, i truly do, but now that i had the opportunity to test a larger sample, i feel it would be irresponsible to recommend it to anyone when there are so many issues and inconsistencies with it.

[UPDATE]

I discovered that the "warm" pair wasn't really warm, it just produces some kind of distortion in the lower regions that threw my measurements off. The distortion isn't the same in the left and the right driver so that's also what caused the strong impression of channel imbalance in the lower region. The rest of the pairs don't seem to have those issues and only exhibit 1-3 db variations between them, which is acceptable. Sorry for the false alarm .

Just a quick question/comment. While you guys comparing dozens of Tenores, does anybody keeps a track of burn-in hours for each, considering previous comments these need 200hr for a bass to start shining? Or do we consider "bassy" as in bassy out of the box? I consider my pair to be reference, though I only have 50+ hrs on it. Perhaps after 200hr it might become bassier, who knows...

Just a quick question/comment. While you guys comparing dozens of Tenores, does anybody keeps a track of burn-in hours for each, considering previous comments these need 200hr for a bass to start shining? Or do we consider "bassy" as in bassy out of the box? I consider my pair to be reference, though I only have 50+ hrs on it. Perhaps after 200hr it might become bassier, who knows...

Both of my pairs have more than 100hrs and i haven't noticed any changes in their sound during that time. Besides, both of James' pairs are new and they sound completely different.

Good, how much everyone would be willing to pay if they solve all above problems & implement strict QA with additional resources & cost. Can we say people would buy it for $150 can they compete at that price point?

Good, how much everyone would be willing to pay if they solve all above problems & implement strict QA with additional resources & cost. Can we say people would buy it for $150 can they compete at that price point?

They should also improve build quality to ask for that much. A Better cable, an actual cable relief system and a better tip selection should be included at that price. Sound wise, it's subjective. A Tenore with better transients and a proper bass roll off would sound like a smoother HD600, so imo it would still be a good buy at that price. Hypothetical questions aside, even at their current price, QC as poor as this is simply unacceptable.

[EDIT]

To be clear, i consider most iems grossly overpriced, especially ultra expensive ones that use dynamic transducers. I mean i get why a multiba custom is expensive, the cost to produce one is many times higher than the one of a typical dd iem. Dynamic drivers though are as cheap as dirt to produce. Furthermore, the RD excuse is a joke when used to defend giants like Senn, JVC, Sonny etc when small companies like Ostry or Zero Audio can do a great job with the tuning and still make a profit at a fraction of both the price and the product volume of their giant counterparts. My point is that if a company asks for 150$ for a DD, their product had better be free of major flaws. If they ask for more than that, any issue with fit or sound is a reason not to buy their product imo.

Good, how much everyone would be willing to pay if they solve all above problems & implement strict QA with additional resources & cost. Can we say people would buy it for $150 can they compete at that price point?